I did a few bio-inventory surveys for a land trust back home. One was an old sand pit that was slowly growing back to a somewhat natural state. I spent hours just looking around the place seeing what was living or growing there.
A few spots were completely barren but the majority of it was recovering even with minimal intervention. Amazing stuff. Wish I could see it now.
throw some fungi into the mix to really see miracles – Paul Stamets on mycoremediation
Some spots will never (or extremely slowly) revgetate without first establishing geotechnical stability. These would be areas such as pit walls, or other areas where the sand is at an angle of repose. They have a really hard time in areas such as beaches (not a mining example but still valid) where the sands shift too much for plants to establish and the nutrients aren’t there.
I remember submitting a ‘soil sample’ to the coop for nutrient analysis even though I knew it was pretty much just straight sand. Absolutely nothing growing in it even though they had tried growing trees in it. They took my word for it but just wanted it on file for the plot’s portfolio.
The coop sent the results back with an analysis that basically said ‘its sand and has pretty much no nutrients’.
The ability to reuse electronics for new purposes until they stop working to the point that they’re irreparable or otherwise no longer fit for purpose. You can do a LOT with old computers and hardware, and you can often resurrect “broken” things relatively easily, if you can find parts. However, sometimes you do have to weigh this against the energy costs some old stuff has relative to new stuff if you don’t have direct access to your own renewables.
My entire home network infrastructure is built out of old, repurposed, and/or second-hand equipment. My router is a broken netbook running OPNSense, my switch is an older Cisco small business switch. I picked up a used couple year old used consumer router and put OpenWRT on it and run it as a standalone access point. It supports Wifi 6, and I expect it to last at least a decade. The only thing I bought new was my modem a few years ago, because I refuse to rent from the ISP.
More directly relevant though is that I’m using an old low power (formerly) Windows 8 tablet from 2014 to run Home Assistant, which I’m using to optimize my energy usage bit by bit. It’s a slow process because I don’t want to run out and buy new stuff until existing stuff stops working, but I’m slowly expanding my network to observe my energy usage and put in place automation to reduce usage where it makes no sense to waste energy.
One thing I’d like to expand into is actually learning to solder and picking up some basic electrical engineering skills. So far this has mainly been hobbyist, replacing only parts with connectors. I’d like to be able to do even more.
- for you – jugaad
- for anyone else interested, it’s really easy to get started – Your Old PC is Your New Server
Hey there, I just wanted to say that I really like this comment. I used to work a tech-centric position at an office type job and the amount of electronic waste there was insane. Seeing a huge dumpster full of old computer parts was quite depressing. Good on you for taking matters into your own hands. I would love to do something like that if I am ever in that sort of position again. Good luck!
Ironically enough, I started at a young age because of that electronic waste. My father worked in IT too and skimmed some stuff out of the waste pile to take home and used it to get me started on my own journey. We weren’t very wealthy and couldn’t afford many new parts, so much of my childhood was me learning how to make the most of whatever I could get my hands on, and I just carried that forward as an adult.
This reminds me, I’ve got smart things (because it was the only thing I knew about 6 years ago when I built it) and I definitely need to look into some motion sensors for a light that has really shitty access and basically is just on 24/7. It’s very difficult to run a second switch and that annoys me.
I’m a cannabis grower.
Back when cannabis was a bit less than legal in my area, I grew indoors and learned how to grow a large crop in very, very tiny spaces. However, as was standard back then for covert growers, it was incredibly resource intensive.
Now that it is fully legalized here, I currently work in greenhouses on a large piece of land. I’ve now learned how to grow much more with so much less.
If the need ever arose, I’m confident that I could grow a very large amount of food, in very tight quarters, with minimal inputs.
I was once tasked with designing automated greenhouses that were supposed to be very profitable, which means that they would use little energy and little labor.
The project did not go forward but I still do think that small units of automated, local, efficient food production is the future. I don’t think single-house size but maybe a dozen households could share one decently sized greenhouse and grow most of their plant-based needs.
Ive work for a company that develops irrigation equipment solely on water and solarpower. Also we work with smallholder farmere. I am able to learn also how smallholder farmers grow all different foods. To pump with waterpower and solarpower is a bit finiky compared with a fuel pump. We work towards removing the finiky and it is a rewarding goal and the work is very interesting.
